WR: November 7 – November 13

The Mistakes

I remember the start of the second six weeks when Mr. Wysong told us that we would be going through many hardships to maintain a proper grade and lifestyle in general. Not only was he correct in that matter, but these past few weeks, especially this past week have shown to me the power of time management and preparation, topics which I have talked about before on my weekly reports. Especially this week, I had to write a two-in-one lab report, make a presentation, and practice a ten-minute speech. Nonetheless, I managed to get through them, and it was purely through determination and good planning.

The first thing I had to get done and prepared for was my math presentation on Monday. This wasn’t too hard as I already knew the material and worked a fulfill my part as a group member. However, there was a test on the material, which meant I had to allocate time to spend studying a little more. To get studying done I practiced two techniques: going to tutorials and hold group study sessions. By doing the former I could directly learn the material from the teacher, but this would only for about 45 minutes in the morning. Group studying, in some ways, was the opposite. I could learn and make my way through the material with friends and the time to do so was practically unlimited. Using either of these ways helped me more than studying by myself.

The next thing I had to finish was my ISM speech and presentation. I knew that it had to be ten minutes long and that ten minutes was a long time to speak, therefore I would need to elaborate on certain materials to enrapture my peers. In order to do this, I began making a speech. I knew that one of my major strengths was improvisational speaking, and therefore having a completely fleshed out speech that I what to memorize was going no tk be detrimental. With that thought in mind I created a presentation based on my outline, and practiced the key ideas, from facts to quotes. As an after thought I realized that ten minutes is actually much shorter than what I thought it would be. As I had gone two minutes over the time limit, I believe I should cut down on the intro and include more concise presentations.

The last thing to do was my medical microbiology lab report, and boy was that a doozy. I knew that it wouldn’t be easy to do all at once, and therefore I started working on it the moment my group had started the lab. Over the course of a week, I was able to fill out the majority of my report. However, with still quite a few things left for me to finish, I decided to ask my teacher and friends about suggestions I should make. In the end, the lab report was about 8 pages long, not double spaced. I realized that even over the course of the week, this still occupied too much time. Next lab report I will attempt to be more concise with my way of explaining the various reports.

It’s all about the journey, not the treasure at the end of the journey. However, it is still important to learn from each and every journey that one embarks on.